Flower Power
Paradise Hotel Time Travel Story continued... by Michael Dolan
It had been a long day and night. That evening would be the Mantra Rock festival. Many people would be there and everyone had to prepare for the real feast. The Krishna devotees wandered off to the back room behind the temple.
Hawk returned to the office and changed his clothes. He needed to clear his head. Everyone was resting. He hit the back door. Next to the garbage cans in the alley, the golden retriever with the red bandana had been the beneficiary of sumptuous leftovers. He was sleeping it off and paid no attention to the stranger from the future who squeezed past him.
Frederick Street was in the heart of what came to be known as the Haight Ashbury district, the epicentrer of the Hippie revolution. The street scene in front of the temple was busy with young people.
Botticelli virgins with ironed hair frolicked in bell-bottoms and peasant blouses while long-haired boys in cowboy hats with leather vests and hiking boots leaned against the storefront and played guitar blues.
Hawk saw a sign posted on a telephone pole:
FREE FOOD GOOD HOT STEW
RIPE TOMATOES FRESH RUIT
BRING A BOWL AND SPOON TO
THE PANHANDLE AT ASHBURY STREET
4 PM 4 PM 4 PM 4PM
FREE FOOD EVERYDAY ITS FREE BECAUSE ITS YOURS
the diggers
Hawk tried to catch his breath. This was the first moment he had been alone since he had arrived from 2017. He needed to catch his bearings.
His feet took him a few steps down the street to the shop next door.
“Free Store” said a sign. The storefront next door was radically different from the Radha-Krishna temple next door. With the air of an organic health food store on LSD, the front was a jumble of wrought iron painted white bordered by a white picket fence. The plate-glass window had a number of weird painted messages, some of them political. The store didn’t seem to sell anything. There were baskets of oranges in front of the store with a sign: “Take one, free. Donate any fruit.”
A step down led into a long hall that mirrored the Krishna temple next door. In fact it was the same building separated only by the small alley. The interior of the Digger Free Store looked like a Hippie Salvation Arm with castoff clothing, coats, jeans, and dresses hanging on steel racks, a shelf of free books, crates of tomatoes, tennis rackets, waffle irons, skis, and kitchen appliances. Some things were labeled “Free.”
A couple of Hell’s Angels in leather jackets sat on folding chairs smoking marijuana and drinking beer while a group of longhaired stoners in jeans and lumberjack shirts were sitting crosslegged on the floor playing harmonica and bongos.
The hall had the same layout as the building next door and so was a kind of perverted mirror reflection of the Radha Krishna temple. Where the devotees were ecstatic, these down-on-their luck druggies were glum and gloomy. Where Swami’s followers glowed with enlightenment and smelled of jasmine incense, these hippie kids were dark and had a rank smell about them, somewhere between onions and unwashed socks. While they were next door to the temple, even the light from the storefront windows here was dimmer and hid in shadows. While the clothes were colorful and the walls were painted with dayglo paint everything had a grayer cast, a duller edge.
As Hawk wandered around trying to organize his thoughts, he bumped over a folding chair with a sign on it, “Take what you want.”
A hunchbacked kid with a chestnut afro haircut and crazy eyes blinked at him through green-tinted granny glasses.
“Excuse me.”
“It’s cool man.”
“Are you in charge here?”
“No, man. You are.”
“What?”
“I’m just Billy, man. You’re in the Free Store. You want to know who the man is? You’re the man.”
Billy was a nerd in a t-shirt and a greasy sheepskin jacket with a funky aroma. He held a dog-eared copy of Orwell’s 1984 in one hand and a half-smoked Camel cigarette in the other. While clearly a member of the hippie persuasion, he had an anonymous face, an air of invisibility that would make him fit into any crowd.
Hawk said: “Cool man. So, what is this place? Are you guys the diggers?”
“I don’t know if you get it, man. The diggers are free. You can be free. This is a free store. We give out free food.”
“So you guys are are a kind of anarcho-Salvation Army for the Hippies?”
“No, man. If it’s salvation you want, you can check out the Krishna people next door.”
As we spoke we noticed a wino stuffing clothing into a paper bag. Billy approached. The wino was shoplifting. His breath reeked. He slipped a pair of shoes into the bag when he thought no one was looking.
Billy told him, “There’s no shoplifting here.”
“What’s that? I’m not stealing. What are you talking about.”
“This stuff is free, man. You can’t steal what’s free. Take what you want.”
The wino stared in disbelief. He took the shoes out of the bag and tried them on.
“These shoes are tight. Can I see another pair?”
“Sure, man. You’re the man,” said Billy.
“Wait a minute,” said Billy, returning to the conversation. “I know you. You were marching with the Krishna people this morning, right? A lot of dudes think you guys are really flipped-out, but it’s cool with me. Everyone is doing the Mantra Rock tonight. Are you going to be there?”
“I think so,” said Hawk.
The Diggers are going to help you guys with the
prasadam distribution.”
Hawk’s memory was clicking in. He had heard of the Diggers. Even in modern San Francisco they were legend. They were at the epicenter of the counterculture, the summer of love, the psychedelic movement. They were a mysterious crew. They started as an actor’s co-op that did guerilla theater, and teach-ins against the Vietnam war. They preached a weird form of anti-Capitalism. They didn’t believe in private property. They invented slogans like “back to the land” and “do your own thing” as part of whole hippie ethos and underground scene.
“Well, I’ll probably see you tonight. These guys are doing security,” he said, pointing to the Hell’s Angels who were popping the top on another round of beers.
Hawk said, “So you’re into the free food program?”
Billy said, “Yeah, we’re feeding muggers, buggers, and thieves, hippies, trippies and dippies, the downtrodden, the disheveled, and the doomed. It’s a political statement. This is the real revolution. Look, I know you Krishna guys think we’re basically demons into heavy
maya, cause we feed people meat, but I’m a vegetarian myself.”
“In the mornings I go over to the farmer’s market and scavenge leftovers; you know, lettuce, oranges, spinach, whatever. We take it over to the free soup kitchen over by the Panhandle. Other guys hit the butcher shops and rip off meant, but that’s not my thing. Meat is murder, man.”
By now the wino had selected a pair of green and red cowboy boots. They were a bit worn, but gave him style. He had changed his raggedy wino pants for some new blue jeans and completed the ensemble with a green Australian slouch hat and an army jacket cast off by a vet from the 101st Airborne division. Looking spiffy in his new duds, the wino shook hands with Billy with a wild leer and a gleam in his eye.
“Thanks man,” he said, smiling past the harmonica player as he wandered back into the street.
Hawk surveyed the wares in the store, but figured it was better to let someone less fortunate take what they needed.
“Well, thanks, Billy,” he said, and made to go.
“You should check out the Psychedelic Shop, dude. I think you’ll find what you need there,” said Billy.
On the street, Hawk wandered past the Psychedelic Shop where LSD, marijuana, and cheap methamphetamines were sold along with hash pipes, rolling papers and dayglo posters of Jimi Hendrix. In the street hippie girls were belly dancing to conga drums and the foggy air was thick with marijuana smoke.
Multi-colored hippies had set up stalls in a kind of street market. Some of them had just laid a blanket on the sidewalk with their wares. There were black men with afro haircuts in striped bell-bottom pants and Chinese girls in saris, low-riders with Mexican hats and motorcycle mamas in cutoff jeans and leather vests; there were Jesus freaks with beards and robes and science geeks with sliderules and pencils. They sold everything from weed and hash and LSD; turquoise jewelry and crystals; shiny bangles and bracelets, silver earrings from Taxco, Mexico; Buckskin jackets, Indian headbands, God’s-eye dream-catchers woven out of red and yellow yarn, and feather head-dresses. They sold Vietnam War flak jackets, army books and aviator goggles; there were leather sandals, Mickey Mouse hats and tie-dyed t-shirts; Zig-zag rolling papers, hash pipes and hand-rolled joints of Acapulco Gold. As he navigated the mob of buyers and sellers the whole thing seemed like a huge street party.
He saw a long-haired boy dressed like an apostle panhandling with a tambourine and flipped him a coin. He asked the kid, “What is this?” and the boy said, “Don’t you know? It’s the Human Be-in. It’s the Revolution, man.”
As Hawk walked toward the park he had seen earlier, he saw people slapping bongos and having a good time; street musicians had formed improvised bands with odd instrumentation; one group were played Stravinsky with clarinet, string bass, and banjoes; another played bebop on saxophone and sitars. It was the strangest combination of sights and sounds he had ever seen.
As he neared the path that had taken him into Buena Vista Park, he had a vision of an angel guarding the entrance to the alley. Krishna John had a vibration of absolute peace and enlightenment. Standing amidst the unwashed masses in the San Francisco afternoon, Krishna John was gaunt and long-boned with a shaved head and a pony tail. He had a classic Roman nose and a ready smile.
“Hawk,” he said, extending a long arm and pointing to the park. “Walk with me.”
Krishna John's Story
As they walked together toward the entrance of the park, Krishna John told his story. He had been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam who had watched his gunner mow down screaming children and water buffalo with machine gun fire from the fiery skies over Khe San.
Upon his return, in 1965, he had renounced violence. Krishna John had been the king of the hippies before he joined the Swami. He knew all the lost and lonely hustlers who lived on the street and they respected him. He used to make his living playing a bamboo flute for nickels and dimes in the Tenderloin district in front of the strip shows that advertised live co-eds dancing on a glass table in front of your very eyes. He had walked the earth in white robes preaching the message of Jesus and giving tarot readings predicting the end of the world, before he found Krishna. But he was disgusted with the hypocrisy and lies of organized religion and the Vietnam war and found his guru in the Swami when he preached the maha-mantra at the Morning Star Ranch .
Krishna John beamed an angelic smile and said, “Hare Krishna, Prabhu. Walk with me.” They strolled past a derelict Chevy with the wheels on blocks parked on the street, and turned the corner into Buena Vista Park.
Krishna John fell silent as they entered the Park. An owl descended from the branches of a live oak and swooped past them, landing atop a clump of elm trees. The cool San Francisco mist shrouded the path in fog as they were shadowed by the majestic pines. Krishna John removed a small bag from his flowing robes. He reached inside and withdrew the loop of wooden rosary. Adjusting its length he returned it to the pouch which he held around his neck with a strap. He began muttering:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare...
Here, smothered by huge trees, the din of the city was remote and it was easy to forget the madness outside. The path led to a moss-covered stairway. Krishna John led the way.
They past a tangle of orange and purple flowers and wild nasturtiums. Hawk found the roses growing in the hollow of a live oak that he had seen the night before. The winding trail through the hilltop forest opened a bit and the fog lifted, allowing a ray of sunshine through the canopy. A pair of mourning doves flitted by noisily flapping their wings. Krishna John stopped, as if sensing something.
Ahead on the path, underneath a huge redwood, stood a robed figure dressed in saffron. The clouds shifted again, illuminating the Swami. He was strolling through the wooded grove, taking the holy name. We could hear him:
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.
Krishna John approached him. It was an impressive sight to see this gentle giant fall on his knees before his gurudeva and then prostrate himself completely, stretching himself full length in the dust of the path. Hawk followed his example. A curious hummingbird stopped in midair.
Krishna John said,
नम ओं विष्णु-पादाय कृष्ण-प्रेष्ठाय भू-तले श्रीमते भक्तिवेदान्त स्वामिन् इति नामिने
नमस् ते सारस्वते देवे गौर-वाणी-प्रचारिणे निर्विशेष-शून्यवादि-पाश्चात्य-देश-तारिणे
nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale śrīmate bhaktivedānta svāmin iti nāmine
namas te sārasvate deve gaura-vāṇī-pracāriṇe nirviśeṣa-śūnyavādi-pāścātya-deśa-tāriṇe
“I offer my respectful obeisances unto His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, who is very dear to Lord Krishna, having taken shelter at His lotus feet. Our respectful obeisances are unto you, O spiritual master, servant of Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami. You are kindly preaching the message of Lord Chaitanyadeva and delivering the Western countries, which are filled with impersonalism and voidism.”
The Swāmi looked up and noticed Krishna John. He smiled in acknowledgment and signaled for them to come near. Hawk and Krishna John walked to where he stood.
“Krishna John,” he said, “Why are you not back at the temple? And who is this boy?”
“This is Hawk, Swamiji. He was at the program this morning, a friend of Allen’s.”
“Ah yes.”
“I was taking him for japa walk. We’re trying to remember Krishna before going to the event. It’s really crazy on the street.”
“Yes, it is Kali-yuga.”
Hawk said, “I see many young people are coming.”
The Swami began walking up the path. “These young people are lost. But they are sympathetic. Wherever we preach our message we will find young people who are sympathetic. They are naturally attracted. Krishna is naturally attractive, just like a magnet.”
As they turned up the trail, a view of the City of San Francisco appeared, framed through the branches of cypress trees. The setting sun shined at the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge.
“This Hare Krsna mantra is so easy to utter, that any man can utter. That we have experienced. Any part of the world, we chant Hare Krsna, and they can very easily imitate and chant. Even child, they also. So by chanting, he gradually becomes Krsna conscious. His heart becomes cleansed and he can understand what is science of Krsna, what is science of God. ”
They began winding back up the trail to the city.
Hawk said, “And what about these Hippies, Swamiji.”
As they reached the entrance to the park, they came upon a group of flower children with hippie beads smoking marijuana with some bikers. The Swami flashed an engaging smile: “I have come to make all the hippies into happies,” he said as a Volkswagen minibus pulled up to the entrance of the park. It was Atmaram. “Do your best to remember Krishna and always chant the holy name,” said the Swami as he rounded the car. The door swung open and The VW took off.
Krishna John said, “Come on we have work to to.”
Back at the temple, it was time for action.
Here's the latest continuation of the science fiction time warp adventure story: Paradise Hotel by Michael Dolan
Mantra Rock at The Avalon Ball Room
Back at the temple, it was time for action.
The Digger’s Free Store was next door to the temple. It was run by a strange group called the Diggers, an offshoot of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. Emmett Grogan had been a jewel thief and and actor. The head of the local Diggers, he could have been a stunt double for Richard Burton. Charming and erudite with wavy hair and boyish good looks he wore a duffle coat and an engaging smile.
He greeted Krishna John as an old friend.
Schwartz Prabhu was there, dressed in a white dhoti, tennis shoes and a business shirt and tie.
“What’s up?” said Hawk.
“Hare Krishna,” said Schartz Prabhu. We gotta load these boxes on the truck. Help us out.”
Bhakta Congo was already hard at work along with Dave Krishna.
Krishna John introduced everyone to Emmett.
“Emmett here runs the place,” he said.
“Nice to meet you boys,” he said. Turning to Krishna John he said, “But you know, we really don’t have any leaders. We’re just folks trying to lend a helping hand. Tonight’s party will be quite an event. The Avalon Ballroom is sold out. Will you be performing tonight?”
Krishna John said, “I’ll be playing my flute, but the real event are the Hare Krishna Chanters. They’ll start the mantra and then the Swami will speak. He’ll explain the philosophy. I hope you can make it.”
Emmett turned to Billy, “I’ll do my best. Look, I’ve got to run. I’m going downtown. I’ve got some business with Alan.”
“Allen Ginsberg?” said Hawk.
“Well, him too, but actually it’s Alan Watts. He’s here with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert and they want to have a meeting with Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and the Grateful Dead. So, I’ve got my hands full. If it was up to me, I’d help you guys put together the food distribution. But I’ve got to run. Do you need to get to the Ball room, Krishna John?”
“Yes, I’ve got to do a sound check for the Swami.”
“All right, I can give you a ride. I’ll drop you off. Come on. Let’s open the doors of perception.”
“Let’s go,” said Krishna John. Emmett buttoned his coat against the San Francisco mist and hurried off. With Krishna John by his side they made an odd couple.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“How are we doing this?” said Billy.
“We’ll do the cooking in our own kitchen and bring the prasadam over here,” said Schwartz Prabhu. “I understand you guys will handle the transportation over to the Ball Room.”
“OK, we have the Hell’s Angels helping with cars and trucks. Even a few teamsters are donating their labor.”
“Good. What about the equipment for the Swami?”
“It’s taken care of. But you should talk to Chet.”
“Right. I spoke to him earlier this morning. All right. Esmeralda and the girls will be over here with the food later. If you have any problems call Atmaram. We’ll go over to the Ball Room and make sure everything’s ready for the Swami.”
“Cool. Emmett’s co-ordinating the entire event, Krishna John’s doing the sound. I’ll stay here, get together with Esmeralda and the girls and make sure the Angels get the food, I mean prasadam down to the hall. You guys can catch a ride with Speedy.
“Speedy?”
The guy with the harmonica stopped playing.
“Yeah?”
“Give these guys a ride to the Avalon.”
“All right man.”
Speedy was true to his name. He drove a candy apple green ‘Chevy 58 with a V8 hotrod engine. Speedy stomped on the gas and raced passed Union Square on Geary to the Avalon Ballroom, tearing up the streets of San Francisco. They reached Sutter and Van Ness in a matter of minutes. Speedy dropped them off at the corner in front of the Ball Room and took off in a cloud of white smoke.
The Avalon Ball Room had originally been a Dance Academy, and had space for a hundred ball room dancers to move comfortably. The dance floor was upstairs from the street. The floor was wooden, giving a warm quality to the sound of the hall. Mirrors against the walls let the dancers see themselves do the foxtrot, the waltz, and the mambo. There were huge gilded columns and a mandala in the center of the ceiling where a chandelier hung.
When they got there Krishna John was on stage, playing a Chinese shakahuchi flute with a deep tone. He was going through the sound check, but the mellow sound of the flute carried Hawk to another time. They cranked the sound up. The floor shook. Hawk felt the vibration from the bamboo flute penetrate his heart as 150 decibels waved through the air.
The sound stopped. Emmett Grogan appeared and at a signal Krishna John took a break and went back stage with Emmett. Schwartz Prabhu and Hawk found Chet Helms upstairs in one of the balconies adjusting the strobe lights. Chet was lean and lanky with long strait hair and a mustache. He looked like one of Robin Hood’s merry men.
“I got these strobe lights at a discount,” he said. “Army Surplus. They were developed by the CIA for use in Vietnam. Never been battle-tested. They can flash at a frequency high enough to cause epileptic fits in rhesus monkeys, but they’ve never really been tested on human beings. We’re going to try them out tonight. Maybe we’ll break on through to the other side. You must be Schwartz. Didn’t you used to play piano for Green Armadillo?”
Schwartz demured. “No, actually it was mostly classical; Rachmaninoff’s 9th Concerto was my thing. But I did do some backup work for Quicksilver Messenger Service before I met the Swami.”
“You know George Harrison, right?”
“That’s a very well-kept secret for the moment.”
A new group took the stage. A stout Texan woman was shouting blues into the microphone that had gone dead for some reason.
“That’s Janis. The strobe gets really good action working off the day-glo paint. It’s what they call psychedelic. Watch this.”
The house lights dimmed. The seats below were cast in darkness. Suddenly a brilliant white light flashed thousands of times per second. Hawk felt his retina dance, his brain shiver. The lurid flourescent colors on the walls jumped into action, bouncing off the pilasters on the walls with weird effects, spray-painting his field of vision and frying the neural synapses inside his brain-pan.
Helms shut it off. The lights came back up. Janis was outraged, screaming something at the technician. The microphone was still dead but you could read the rage on her purple face as she bunched her fists into knots. Hawk couldn’t wait to see her sing the blues.
Helms said, “I need to adjust the synch. The idea is to have the lights play with the rhythm. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a new gateway to the mind,” said Schwartz Prabhu diplomatically.
Helms spoke less like a cut-throat business man and more like a hippie prophet.
“Well, that’s the Swami’s lookout. I hear the Swami is going to give a good talk. It’s all part of the same revolution, man. There’s a lot of young people who want a change from the establishment bullshit. They’re looking for something spiritual, here. I hope we can bring it. Look, as for the money, as long as the bands show up, you guys get 90% what’s left of the gate after we pay the bands and the Hell’s Angels for security.”
“Right,” said Schwartz, “Atmaram is handling the money.”
“Cool.”
“Listen, Chet, I need to check the Swami’s equipment.”
“Sure,” said Helms. “Go backstage and see Wrong-way Eddie. He knows all about it.”
“All right, Chet. Come on Hawk, we’re burning daylight.”
The two of them went downstairs and walked the length of the ball room to get backstage. The ball room was a long boxy rectangle with no chairs. At a concert it would hold maybe 2,000 people standing up, maybe more depending on how close they stood. It was big enough for a good old party, but not exactly a thrilling opening night. Word was that the Fillmore had better acoustics, but the Avalon had superior light shows. The strobe light would blow a lot of people’s minds.
The ceiling was a huge mandala with a chandelier in the center. They walked to the big stage at one end of the hall, where Janis had cooled down a bit. She wore a black miniskirt with high-heeled roman sandals. She wore rows of love-beads as a necklace and multicolored bangles as jewelry. Her ginger-colored hair was frazzled and stood on end as if she had just had electroshock therapy. The microphone was working now and blasted a screech of feedback.
She grinned at Hawk and Schwartz Prabhu. She winked playfully and said, “Howdy boys, Mama’s happy to see you” into the microphone, and shook her hips.
Schwartz Prabhu turned red as they walked back stage. Behind the curtain they found Wrong Way Eddie moving amps.
“You guys are with the Swami?”
“That’s right.”
“OK, we gotta move this throne. It’s pretty heavy, so take an end.”
There was a giant throne made of plywood and decorated with red velvet. It took three of them to move it onstage. Janis was taking a smoke break. Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir were plugging in their guitars as Pigpen was setting up his drum kit.
“Hare Krishna, gentleman,” said Weir as he tried a couple of riffs with a bottleneck slide. Jerry Garcia, or Captain Trips as he was known, was stoic. His head was ten thousand light years away. He nodded and Weir changed gears, playing a backup rhythm as Garcia sliced his way through a modal lead. Wrong Way said, “Over here. That’s good.” They set up the throne center stage, between the drum kit and the guitar amps. Wrong way mopped his head with a bandana. “Take a break.”
Hawk took a quick walk around the block. Outside the Ball Room, Hawk tried to catch his breath. This was the first moment he had really been alone since he had arrived from 2017. He needed to catch his bearings.
He bought the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle from a paper boy on a street corner and went over the headlines. He walked over to Lafayette Park and sat on a bench.
He saw the date on the newspaper: January 29, 1967. So it was true. He wasn’t dreaming. He looked at the headlines. The Apollo I spacecraft had exploded and was destroyed by fire in Cape Canaveral, killing all three of the American astronauts on board. Killed in the blaze were Command Pilot Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Senior Pilot Edward H. White II, and Pilot Roger B. Chaffee. At 6:31 in the evening, the three men were inside the capsule of the Saturn rocket, in simulation of the planned moon launch. A spark from a short-circuited wire ignited a flash fire in the pressurized cabin of pure oxygen.
Hawk looked around. Four teenage girls were walking toward Van Ness, wearing a motley of strange hippie garments: A dark woman wore a Mexican poncho with a sari and motorcycle boots, the blond had an African caftan with a Russian bearskin hat and love beads. A black man walked by wearing a sailor’s hat and a dashiki. A throng of kids sat smoking marijuana making their own kind of music with bongos and a guitar. They were singing, “Ballad of a Thin Man” by Bob Dylan: “..And you know something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is... Do you, Mister Jones?”
Hawk turned the page. In Vietnam Operation Cedar Falls was a massive search and destroy operation to pacify a stronghold of the Viet Cong, called "Iron Triangle", close to Saigon. It was either a great victory for democracy or the Eve of Destruction. The sun was going down.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Back at the Ball Room, Hawk saw the denizens of San Francisco lining up for tickets to the Mantra Rock.
Where the mob crowded at the entrance were burly men, long hair in pony tails, rugged beards and tattooes, wearing cut-off leather vests and nazi helmets. Parked at their side were Harley Davidson choppers. They were the Hell’s Angels, stoned on acid and providing security for the Grateful Dead as agreed with the Diggers, the anarchist-Hippie Salvation Army. The Angels carried police night-sticks and looked like they meant business. Seeing Hawk, they recognized him from the Digger’s “Free” Store and let him in. “You’re with the Krishna’s right? Tell the Swami we said hello, he said with a menacing grin.”
Hawk jostled his way through the gathering audience in the ball room and made it back stage. Krishna John was there with Emmett and Schwartz Prabhu. Bhakta Congo was rehearsing a bit of drum magic with Jay Ram. The members of a rock group were fiddling with a bottleneck slide riff and a bit of rhythm. And in the back of the green room drinking red wine were a couple of newcomers chatting with Allen Ginsberg.
“Ah, Hawk,” said Ginsberg. “You made it. This is Hawk. We spent a lovely night together over at the Radha-Krishna temple, didn’t we Hawk. I was just telling these gentlemen some of the stories you told me about the 21st century. Hawk is a time-traveller, isn’t that right?”
Hawk couldn’t remember much about last night’s conversations besides Ginsberg’s rambling. Had he really told him about the 21st Century?
A kindly British gentleman with a wineglass and a twinkle in his eye lifted his head and said, “Time travel?”
Hawk recognized him from an Eastern Studies survey course he had taken at Stanford: It was Alan Watts. The man next to him was the Harvard Psychologist and LSD preacher, Timothy Leary. They had come to see Allen Ginsberg in action. Ginsberg was to kick off the mantra rock event with a short poem and a harmonium mantra chant.
Hawk began, “Well...”
He was interrupted by Dr. Leary. “What this young man is trying to say is that time transcends space and always has. Time is not bound by space; it has to do with consciousness which goes beyond. The key to time travel is pharmacological. Never forget that. Chemicals are the key to consciousness and consciousness controls time. Never refuse an opportunity to travel in time, I always say.”
“But Tim,” said Zen-master Watts. “Isn’t time really just a mental construct that keeps us from losing our egos? After all, as long as we’re addicted to time, we’re stuck in space. The wheel of time is really the wheel of birth and death, isn’t it? But then, the non-linear reality of time is more widely understood outside western culture, don’t you think? I wonder what the Swami would say. Allen?” Watts tipped his wineglass back. Leary leered.
As his coal-black beard waggled, Ginsberg’s eyes rolled in his head: “Why don’t we listen to Hawk? Tell us your story, man. Give us a Kerouackian rhapsadoodle blues on relativistic mobility through the warped waves of temporal sanity. Where did it start?”
-->
“Well, I think it started at the Paradise Hotel.”
The latest continuation of the Science Fiction Time Warp Adventure Story currently Mesmerizing the entire internet: by Michael Dolan
The Quick and the Dead
“But Tim,” said Zen-master Watts. “Isn’t time really just a mental construct that keeps us from losing our egos? After all, as long as we’re addicted to time, we’re stuck in space. The wheel of time is really the wheel of birth and death, isn’t it? But then, the non-linear reality of time is more widely understood outside western culture, don’t you think? I wonder what the Swami would say. Allen?” Watts tipped his wineglass back. Leary leered.
 |
| Alan Watts, Zen-man |
As his coal-black beard waggled, Ginsberg’s eyes rolled in his head: “Why don’t we listen to Hawk? Tell us your story, man. Give us a Kerouackian rhapsadoodle blues on relativistic mobility through the warped waves of temporal sanity. Where did it start?”
Hawk, still disoriented from time travel said, “Well, I think it started at the Paradise Hotel.”
 |
| Allen Ginsberg, mad poet of the 60s |
Ginsberg beamed:
“Aha! Paradise Lost, then.
” He began wheezing an eccentric tune out of his harmonium. Neal Cassady lit a cigarette and used the match to light the poet up.
A commotion at the back door signaled the entrance of the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia sauntered in with guitar man Bob Weir and drummer Pigpen in tow. Janice Joplin, a Mae West style feather boa around her shoulders sashayed in out of nowhere and began smothering Pigpen with kisses. “Golly!” she said, making big eyes at everyone in the green room “Ain’t he cute?”
The sound was interrupted by the thunder of Bhakta Congo and Jay Ram reaching a mirdanga crescendo. Together they shouted: “Nitai Gaura Hari Bol! Hari Bol! Hari Bol! Hari Bol!”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The stage microphone was working fine. Everyone back stage heard the announcement:
It was Chet Helms:
“And now Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of the groovy Krishna people of the Radha Krishna Temple, right here in San Francisco, we here at the Avalon Ball Room welcome you to a unique presentation of Mantra Rock. We have a great lineup tonight: Moby Grape!”
A big round of applause, a few catcalls.
“The Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead are here tonight!”
Big applause, screams of joy.
“And the Hare Krishna chanters along with Allen Ginsberg and Swami Bhaktivedanta will rock the mantra and send us into outer space with peace and love for one and all. So thank you very much. What’s purple and swims in the ocean ladies and gentlemen? MOBY GRAPE!”
The guitarist’s screech filled the hall. A witch’s brew of amplified psychedelic country rock blared from the speakers blowing the LSD-soaked minds of the flower children squeezed together in the audience of the Avalon Ball Room with sonic energy. The teenage girls in love-beads went wild with the magic as electric strobe lights flashed with epileptic fury lighting up the dayglo walls. The entranced crowd began dancing in a frenzy of lysergic enthusiasm.
After a few numbers by Moby Grape Helms returned.
“Moby Grape. And now ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and children of all ages, as the the muse of the beat generation, the madman of the merry pranksters, poet, mystic and gone traveler to way-out worlds, Mister Neal Cassady.”
Hawk remembered him. He was the muscular lumberjack from last night, the guy who offered the two hippie chicks a ride to Japantown. He seemed out of place among the freaks, madmen and outcastes who had gathered in the Ball Room. As the psychedelic band noodled through some modal chord changes and the drummer added percussive rolls, Cassady strolled onstage carrying a ten-pound hammer. Taking the mike, he rapped an incoherent prose-poem as he flipped the hammer in the air and caught it behind his back.
“All is known; all forms are torn
your mind is blown away by storms
of socialist extremist banter,
Pentagon generals pitter patter,
novels are written without grammar.
Existentialist poets war,
blows tens of millions out the door;
all is known and nothing’s new,
civil rights extremists too;
it’s all so different, all the same,
mantras sweeten the holy name,
girls in Denver don’t wear clothes
plus ça change plus c est la même chose...”
And as he uttered his rap Cassady punctuated his poetry by tossing his ten-pound sledge-hammer in the air with glee, a square john real gone 40 year-old lumberjack with crazy eyes dazzling the hippie mob of outcastes and untouchables with circus side show antics and a Jean Paul Sartre rant as the electric Rhodes piano of Moby Grape lurched through weird acid-rock chord changes.
The strobes hit full fury, lighting up the sledgehammer as it ripped through the air ever higher in stop-action frame by frame. The man on stage moved like a brakeman hammering railroad ties in a herky jerky Chaplain movie. The organ hit a crescendo and stopped. Strobes flashed. The house lights went down. The fluorescent paint on the walls glowed green and blue.
A spot hit the stage. Cassady grinned his eyeballs rolling like billiard balls on a pool table. “And now ladies and gentleman and members of the non-establishment social circle of a country in rebellion searching for its lost soul in the gutters of San Francisco, Miss Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company!”
A soft spotlight lit up the diminutive Texan girl with ginger hair in the miniskirt and bangles and ostrich boa around her neck leaned into the microphone and crooned, “Didn’t I make you feel...like you wanna own me?” with a knowing voice that could have come from the gin-soaked throat of blues queen Big Mama Thornton. She held the audience in her grip, toying with the lyrics like a spider with a fly as the band built the sound up. Finally the whole rhythm section with bass and drums were crashing through the chorus as she sang “Hold on Hold on Hold on Hold on! Take another piece of my HEART now baby!” melting the audience down into a pool of warm tears with the white hot emotion of her heartbreak.
The Jefferson Airplane was on next. The light show was subtler now: a spot shot through a lava lamp made gloopy globules of yellow and green slime the walls of the Avalon ball room as Grace Slick went through her trademark:
“One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother give you don’t do anything at all.
Hawk and the Krishna followers stood behind the curtains looking out at the crowd. They were going on next. Hawk surveyed the audience. Somehow 5,000 people had packed into a Ball Room that was designed for one hundred couples to dance comfortably. They were dancing, swaying, sweating, and generally in a trance provoked by the drugs they were drinking, shooting, snorting, popping or dropping. Their minds had been expanded and shrunken, time’s proportions expanded and dilated. They were not the Lost Generation or the Beat Generation; they were the Love Generation and they understood the message completely.
Ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall.
And if you go chasing rabbits, and you know you're going to fall
Tell 'em a hookah-smoking caterpillar has given you the call,
And call Alice, when she was just small.
When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice I think she'll know
When logic and proportion Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said:
“Feed your head Feed your head!”
The music combined with the light show combined with psychedelic altered states fused the consciousness of the audience as the merged into the oneness of the Generation of love. Grace Slick blew the crowd a kiss.
With this, Allen Ginsberg appeared with his harmonium. He sat on a folding chair, resting the boxy instrument on his lap with his left hand and pumping it with his right. Its eery off-beat blown sound was slightly out of tune. Ginsberg set up an offpitch drone as he whined a Buddhist mantra. He began quoting a line from his poem Howl: “Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel! When I was in Benares I met an angel who recited the mantra. It is the mantra for peace, the maha-mantra:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, say it with me now.”
And the mob chanted in singsong:
“Hare Krishna Hare Krishna”
Ginsberg continued, “There’s more: Krishna Krishna Hare Hare. Chant with me now.”
And the mob said, “Krishna Krishna Hare Hare.”
“Now the Rama: Hare Rama Hare Rama”
And the crowd repeated. In this way, as he continued to pump the harmonium Ginsberg taught the crazy drug-stoned children of flower power the words of the Hare Krishna mantra.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I saw an angel strolling the Bowery in golden robes. He is among us now. I chant the Mantra. It helps me. It is for world peace, but I can’t explain it. But the Swami can tell you all what it means. Please welcome Swami Bhaktivedanta of the Radha-Krishna temple. Hare Krishna, everyone.”
Ginsberg stood to welcome Swami Bhaktivedanta who rose to the stage with a divine presence. Amid the smoke and the sweat of the Ball Room he appeared in a ray of light as a gentle spot picked out his figure: a robust man with a golden complexion in flowing saffron robes. He strode with great dignity to the center of the stage where a red velvet throne had been erected for him to sit. Moving gracefully, he ascended the throne.
The crowd was hushed. The entired crowd was in half-trance, stunned by drugs or lulled by music. They stood in awe and reverence, the Hare Krisna mantra on their lips.
The Swami leaned forward. A steel tumbler of water had been left for him on a small table next to the throne. He raised it and drank without letting the rim of the steel touch his lips. He looked out at the crowd, adjusted the microphone to his level and smiled a broad grin. His eyes took in the scene. His lips moved in a sacred mantra.
He began, “My dear boys and girls, I thank you very much for joining us this evening for the celebration of Hare Krishna mantra. With your permission I am going to sing the maha-mantra and then I will explain it. Even if you don't understand the language of the song, still, if you kindly hear patiently, the sound vibration will act.”
The Swami took up a pair of small brass hand cymbals and began to ring them together, rhythmically. Below him onstage were seated the Hare Krishna chanters: Krishna John who played a hand drum along with Bhakta Congo and Jay Ram who accompanied him, playing their drums softly with a slow, steady beat. Schwartz Prabhu, Dave Krishna, Hawk Prabhu, sat to one side with hand cymbals.
The Swami began: Jaya Shri Krishna Chaitanya, Prabhu Nityananda, Shri Adwaita Gadadhara, Shrivasadi Gaura Bhakta Vrinda.
The devotees echoed his song in call and response. Then the Swami began to sing with deep gravity, his eyes closed:
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare...
Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.
Krishna John beckoned the audience with a wave of his hand to sing along. A few people in the audience joined in.
The Swami repeated the mantra. This time, Krishna John stood up along with Bhakta Congo and Jay Ram and raised his hands to the sky, clapping along over the drum suspended from his shoulders. Clapping his hands harder as the Kinshasa-mambo combo brought their drums closer to the microphone, Krishna John exhorted the crowd to sing along. The hippies gathered there finally got it. They had learned the mantra. They started chanting along, at first softer but then stronger, until finally the entire audience of 5,000 flower power children of the Love Generation began to roar out the mantra:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare.
The Grateful Dead appeared from nowhere and where onstage now, their drummer Pigpen picking up on the jungle percussion of Bhakta Congo and the Afro-Cuban beat of Jay Ram. Jerry Garcia found the right chords on his Les Paul Gibson guitar and put a bit of Indian raga into it. The light show played subtle colors on the walls of the Avalon Ball Room. The entire hall swayed with the mantra.
The Swami had suffered great hardship to come to this moment. He had been through poverty in India, a horrific sea voyage tossed by storms across the Atlantic Ocean, life on New York’s Bowery surrounded by winos and madmen. Even repression by suspicious immigration officials and FBI authorities investigating subversive activities.
And now he was surrounded by 5,000 American girls and boys, young people enthusiastically chanting the Hare Krishna mantra. While India had been turning to the materialistic principles of a consumer society, aping the West; here in the West young people were searching for their soul and finding it in the maha-mantra.
He brought the song to a conclusion. Looking out over the crowd again, the Swami spoke:
“So I shall not take much of your time, you are tired. But some of the important things I may inform you, that this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is not a religious type; it is a great culture. It is a great culture for spiritual emancipation. At the present moment, we have concocted so many religious principles, but real religion is that which teaches to surrender to God, to love God. That is real religion. That is what we are teaching. Our Krishna consciousness movement is no sectarian movement. We don't say that this is Christian religion or Hindu religion or Mohammedan religion or Buddhist religion. These religions develop in different parts of the world under different conditions. They give some idea of our relationship with God. But real religion is that which teaches how to love God. If by following certain religious principles you develop your dormant love of God, then that is first-class religion. That development is without any reason. It is not that you love God because He supplies bread: "Oh God, give us our daily bread." No, there is no exchange like that. There is no reason why I should ask. God is great, I am His part and parcel; it is my duty to love Him. When you develop this consciousness, it is called Krishna consciousness. Try to understand this philosophy of Krishna consciousness.
It is not a new thing. Krishna consciousness philosophy was taught 5,000 years ago. Bhagavad Gita is the philosophy of Krishna consciousness. Although it was written down 5,000 years ago in history, within the Bhagavad Gita it is stated that It was spoken some millions of years ago to the Sun-god. Apart from that reference Bhagavad Gita is eternal, because it teaches what is your relationship with God, what is your eternal duty to God, and what is the ultimate end of life. The last instruction of the Bhagavad Gita is that one has to give up all sorts of rascaldom or concocted religion. One simply has to surrender to God. That is religion. We have developed this human form of life after passing through many millions of lower grades of life, and now we have to develop this Krishna consciousness, love of God. Take this Krishna consciousness movement very seriously we have volumes of books to convince you of your relationship with God, and what is your duty, what is your ultimate goal of life these things are all very nicely explained in the Bhagavad Gita. But, unfortunately, so-called scholars and so-called wise men misinterpret the whole thing. That is why the Lord appeared as Lord Chaitanya 500 years ago, to establish the correct principles of Bhagavad Gita. He showed that even if you do not understand the process of religion, then simply chant Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare/ Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare. The results are practical. For example, when we were chanting Hare Krishna, all the members who were assembled here were joining in, but now when I am talking about philosophy, some are leaving. It is very practical, you can see. The Hare Krishna Mantra is so enchanting that anyone can take part in any condition and if he continues to chant, gradually he will develop his dormant love of God. His heart will be cleansed of all dirty things and gradually he will be freed from the material concept of life, and he will be joyful. He will see everyone as sons of God, and then he will begin his loving transcendental service to Krishna. Our only request is that you try to understand this Krishna consciousness movement. It is very simple. We are requesting everyone to chant the Hare Krishna Mantra and take Prasadam. When you are tired of chanting, the Prasadam is ready. You can immediately take Prasadam. And if you dance, then all bodily exercise is Krishnaized; and all of the attempts of the yoga processes are attained by this simple process. So chant, dance, take Prasadam even if you do not at first hear this philosophy, it will act, and you will be elevated to the highest platform of perfection. Thank you very much.”
The Swami stood to go. He raised his hands high as if to shower a benediction and then folded his palms in prayer and bowed his head. The audience burst into applause. A long pencil of light focused over his form like a halo as he left the stage, his long golden robes flowing and reflecting the hazy glow.
Atmaram escorted him off-stage as Krishna John took the microphone.
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“So you heard the Swami. We can chant the Hare Krishna mantra and feel the ecstasy and when we’re tired, there is prasadam, transcendental holy food offered to Krishna with love and devotion. If you’ll all just sit in rows on the floor, we’ll distribute the prasadam.”
